VIMS marks 75 years studying the Chesapeake Bay
When Maurice "Mo" Lynch arrived as a young graduate student at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in 1962, the place was evolving fast.
"It was just at the very beginning of what I call the growth into a full-blown marine science laboratory, as opposed to a fisheries laboratory," recalled Lynch, now a VIMS professor emeritus.
One of the first things he and his fellow students tackled in the summer of '63 was a directive from the General Assembly to determine whether dredging the James River to ship oil up to refineries around Richmond would harm the region's vital, yet struggling, commercial oyster fishery.
For lawmakers, it wasn't merely a scientific quandary.
"They had a political problem they didn't want to deal with," Lynch said. "So they punted it to VIMS.
"And so that whole summer, the institute just went full-blown. Everybody was drafted and was out on the river for these 24-hour studies up and down the region. And we managed to pull off that big, integrated study that provided the data for building a big, hydraulic model of the James River."
The final answer? No, dredging wouldn't harm the oyster industry, Lynch said. But by then a pipeline was already funneling the oil to Richmond, so the dredging question had become moot, anyway.
"So the state didn't have to spend the money to do it," Lynch said.
This is but one example of how VIMS has been charged over the years with using its expertise to fulfill one of its key mandates: to provide unbiased, science-based information and advice.
This year, VIMS is marking its 75th anniversary, a milestone noted in Congress earlier this month when Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Rep. Rob Wittman introduced a resolution of congratulations.
Warner noted VIMS' "reputation as a world-class research institution that advances the frontiers of marine science," while Kaine said its research has "yielded critical insights into the water quality of the Chesapeake and its rivers," as well as effective management strategies for its commercial fisheries.
Not all commercial watermen appreciate some of those strategies, which they consider too restrictive for them to maintain their livelihoods, creating what Tommy Leggett at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation calls "strife."
"You're always going to have this back and forth and confrontation between scientists and watermen," Leggett said. "There's an awful lot that scientists know that watermen never know and an awful lot that watermen know that scientists don't. Both sides would benefit greatly from listening to and respecting one another. But it's getting a little bit better, slowly but surely."
Leggett should know: He's a VIMS graduate who decided he didn't want to "become an ivory tower scientist" and became a waterman, instead. He's also the resident oyster expert at CBF.
John Wells, dean and director at VIMS, says the institution has come a long way.
"It's come from truly humble beginnings and evolved over the years to, I think, the powerhouse for research, education and service in the Chesapeake Bay," Wells said. "And recognized as a leader throughout the world."
Then and now
According to "A Celebration of 75 Years," a history booklet produced by VIMS, it began in 1940 as the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory, the brainchild of a biology professor at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. The lab was a single small building on the Yorktown side of the York River with an annual operating budget of $12,000 and a narrow mission to address fisheries issues.
"And that's what we did all the way into the 1960s," Wells said.
The VFL had a unique, three-pronged mandate: Conduct basic and applied research, provide independent science and advice, and offer graduate-level education in aquatic science.
Its three aquatic biologists set about studying the native bay oysters, whose numbers were already plummeting, plus mussels, clams, Chesapeake blue crabs and striped bass. They also looked at industrial pollution in the feeder rivers.
In the 1950s, the little lab was demolished to make way for the new Coleman Bridge, so its biologists relocated to Gloucester Point across the river.
As its staff grew that decade, so did its fields of research — branching into oceanography, fishery biology, coastal engineering and a suspicious pathogen striking the native oysters. Researchers began annual surveys of finfish and blue crabs that continue today to better understand and manage the species.
"Our ability to understand what's happened to fisheries over 50, 60, 70 or more years surpasses what other institutions are able to gain," Wells said. "Some of our fisheries data is long enough to where we can begin to tease out the impacts of climate change."
VFL opened the Eastern Shore Laboratory in Wachapreague to help improve commercial clam production — efforts that eventually established Virginia as the national leader in hard-clam aquaculture.
In 1962, the General Assembly renamed the laboratory the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and made it an independent marine laboratory.
VIMS had its work cut out for it, with water quality in the bay, as well as the iconic oyster population, both still in perilous decline from pollution, overfishing and, by then, a second oyster disease. By the end of the '60s, environmental science was an emerging field.
In 1970, VIMS opened its Oyster Hatchery for breeding experiments to help restore the population. It began its Shark Research Program, which today is the longest-running data set on shark populations in the world.
It became the headquarters for Virginia Sea Grant, providing the best available coastal and marine science throughout the state. Researchers kept improving their lab analyses with state-of-the-art technologies such as electron microscopes, gel electrophoresis and gas chromatography.
By 1980, VIMS had nearly 600 scientists and staff and an annual budget of nearly $19 million. That decade, VIMS became affiliated once again with William and Mary.
"The early deans," said Lynch, "they wanted top scientists, but who had this interest in providing information to do something in terms of making a better Chesapeake Bay. Or, as we used to call it, a better Virginian Sea."
Researchers doubled-down on environmental issues — the impacts that sewage sludge, exhaust fumes and nutrient overload from stormwater runoff were having on the bay. Efforts to rebuild the striped bass population led to a rebound in the fishery.
In the 1990s VIMS scientists used the Internet to launch more intensive communication and partnerships with colleagues in other countries. They began to build oyster sanctuary reefs in bay tributaries, and foster aquaculture using specially bred, disease-tolerant native oysters. They started to look in earnest at oxygen-deprived "dead zones" caused by explosions of toxic algal blooms. And they began a unique — and globally recognized — effort to replant eelgrass off the Eastern Shore.
As the 21st century arrived, VIMS continued its traditional efforts, but expanded into even broader arenas: the impacts of climate change on coastal environments, shoreline studies and multidisciplinary fisheries research. Its scientists began to look at coastal and marine environments in other parts of the world — New England, New Zealand and Antarctica, for instance — to better understand similar systems in the bay.
"You can't be parochial," Lynch said.
"Part of what they do out there in the world on research cruises," said Wells, "can be brought back to bear on questions and issues on Chesapeake Bay. And, likewise, the core areas that we deal with here in research are exportable to other parts of the world. So it's a two-way street."
Today, VIMS has 450 faculty, staff and students, and a budget of about $45 million.
Framing, funding, the future
Decades of VIMS research has made the Chesapeake Bay an important global model for estuarine science, said Linda Schaffner, a VIMS graduate and now its associate dean for academic studies.
"It's probably one of the most well-studied systems in the world," Schaffner said. "And certainly one of the systems that has the most science published on it."
But one of the institute's most important accomplishments, she said, is in the way its people have been framing the basic questions.
"They understood that there was a human dimension to the science," Schaffner said. "They felt that it was important back then to understand how human activities could impact the organisms and the environments of the bay, and they never left that behind."
Going forward, VIMS officials agree the toughest challenge isn't scientific, but economic. Nearly half its funding comes from the state, while faculty must compete for federal and state grants for the rest.
They say the federal funding climate is growing even more competitive even as the issues facing the bay and coastal communities everywhere grow more complex.
"Unfortunately," said Wells, "almost everything one way or another relates back to funding. … There's so much uncertainty in Washington now that it's hard from one year to another to plan effectively because there's so much acrimony, so much uncertainty.
"It's a really tough world to live in."
Still, as older professors retire, Wells, said, they're hiring younger faculty with an optimistic eye toward emerging issues.
"They are enthusiastic — they have tools, techniques, solid science backgrounds," Wells said. "So I think where we're going is in the direction of cutting-edge science and actually leading in that direction in many ways. Identifying what are the pressing problems we really need to address, what are the questions that are out there that really need to be answered."
